Harry Potter and the Death Note
by AlexNameless
Summary: In which Ryuku drops a death note in London, England, and little Harry Potter can't help but pick it up. An already arrogant, angry, self-proclaimed magician begins to think himself a god. How will this affect Albus plans for Harry, and the entire wizarding world?
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1 – Chance or Fate

It was breakfast as usual at the Number Four Privet Drive. Vernon had left for work an hour ago, leaving his wife Petunia to feed the boys and take them school shopping.

Harry had awoken to an impatient rapping at his cupboard door. "Up, Harry! Get up!" She didn't wait for him to answer, but instead walked back into the kitchen.

Harry barely registered her retreating footsteps and the sound of the kitchen door shutting itself loudly. Half aware, he felt around on the shelf behind him for his glasses and shoved them on.

"I'm up, I'm up." He called, moreso just to say it than out of the expectation that she would hear him.

Shoving the ratty old football (soccer ball) bedspread off of him and to the side, he reached forward down to the end of his cupboard where it got small. This was where the spiders lived, rather undisturbed because not even his feet fit in that tiny end space where the stairs met the first floor.

A small web was in one of the corners and he knelt down to look at the black spider sitting in it. "Good morning, Charlotte. Did you sleep well?" He looked at it for a moment, pretending it could listen and imagining it could talk back. What would a spider say, anyhow? Would it ask for a bug to eat?

"Harry, are you dressed yet?" Petunia yelled from the kitchen. "You're going to make us late!" She had no patience for him.

He rolled his eyes at her behavior. Why did they have to leave this early, anyways?

"Nearly, Aunt Petunia!" Without standing, he pulled his pajama shirt over his head, quickly replacing it with a plain t-shirt that was two sizes too big for him. He did similar for his trousers, pants, and socks and changed sitting down.

He had to get dressed like this because even at ten, he was too tall to stand up straight in the cupboard. _'Stupid humans.'_

When he entered the kitchen, Petunia was fawning over Dudley. "I can't believe this will be your last year of primary school!"

She was nearly in tears, sitting at the table watching Dudley eat his plate of three huge, double-chocolate muffins and drink his glass of chocolate milk.

"It'll be my last year of driving you to school."

Harry couldn't wait. It would be his last year of going to the same school as Dudley! Dudley would be going to a boarding school called Smeltings next year while he would go to the local state school, Stonewall High.

Harry got himself his bowl of cereal and then grabbed a small plate from the kitchen cupboards. "Aunt Petunia, I'm having muffins, too." He said.

Before she could stop half-crying about Dudley's final year of school, Harry had already taken a single muffin from the tray and duplicated it two times before placing the original back in the tray. He wasn't going to eat them now – his cereal would be enough to fill him up when he duplicated it. He was going to put them in his cupboard with the rest of his stash just in case he got grounded.

"Harry James Potter!" Aunt Petunia was marching right up to him, in his face, seething with rage, in moments.

"How dare you! Those are Dudley's. I warned you, no more of your nonsense! You are a normal boy, and you will behave like one!" Dudley was laughing in the background at the exchange. He loved watching Harry get in trouble, even if Harry wasn't afraid like he was as a small child.

Harry just stared, bored, and doubled the portion of his cereal, and started eating it. His aunt's face went from pale to red with rage.

"When we get home this afternoon, you are grounded to your cupboard for two weeks! Do you hear me? Two weeks! No meals!" She didn't really mean no meals. He would only get no meals until she stopped being mad at him, and then he would get two small meals a day. But if he got too tired to make his urine and feces disappear from the bucket in the corner of his cupboard, she would only add days to it.

Harry finished his cereal and turned his back on her to wash his bowl off in the sink and put it in the dishwasher. "Yes, Aunt Petunia." She was just a human. She couldn't do anything to him that he couldn't fix with his magic.

He put his two new muffins in the nearly-full gallon-size ziplock baggie he'd pilfered from the kitchen, which then went in an old shoebox, which then got hidden under carefully arranged out of season clothes on his shelf.

They got ready and Aunt Petunia took them into London to go school shopping. Harry would get the bare basics plus hand me downs from Dudley, while Dudley got new everything whether he needed it or not. Or even if he didn't want it. Dudley never used the big pointy little colorful erasers that you stuck over your pencil's actual eraser.

Harry was drug along through several different stores to buy Dudley's school uniform, Dudley's entire school supply list and more, and new day clothes for Dudley because he had gained height and weight since last term. Harry was drug along mostly to push the trolly, put the bags in the trolly while Dudley picked out candy and pokemon cards, and get tripped and poked and hit with pencil boxes by Dudley. Harry would cry out and tell Dudley to stop, and Petunia would yell at them both to stop fighting in the store. Just more of the usual.

They stopped at an ice cream parlor on the way back to the car.

Petunia picked out a table and motioned for him put the bags down. "Wait here and watch the bags, Harry." With a heave of effort, Harry sat down all the bags. You could hardly see him over the mountain of them. _'She really went overboard this time. Uncle Vernon will be mad.'_

"What would you like, Dudley?" Petunia asked, her voice automatically losing its cold, icy tone and turning sunny like a young mum talking to her toddler. "Knickerbocker glory?"

Harry watched their backs bitterly. "I want a lemon ice pop!" He called after them. He knew he wouldn't be getting one, even if it was the cheapest thing on the menu. He felt so hungry after all that magic earlier today duplicating. It was a double-edged sword, his magic. He was able to eat enough to have the energy to get through the day and get everything done, and to survive the days he was locked in without meals, but using it made him tired, lethargic, and hungry.

He watched the people and the pigeons and took in all the sights and sounds of the city. It was nice to get away from Little Whinging. He hated the small town where everyone either looked at him with pity or disgust. Where all the women gossiped over tea and where all the children bullied him for not having parents, wearing hand me downs, and wearing glasses.

'_I'd do anything to just get on a motorcycle and fly away from here. Far, far away. Be king of a castle so that everyone would have to respect me.'_

Then, he saw something odd. A book was falling out of the sky. He watched, bewildered, as a plain black notebook fell out of the sky and into the road in front of the ice cream shop. '_Huh? What in the world? It couldn't have fallen out of a plane…'_

Looking back and forth, up and down the sidewalk and shops, no one else was paying the book any mind. Curious, he darted into the road and retrieved the book and went back to his seat before a car could come.

'_Safe!'_ He didn't have time to open it and look at it, though, because he heard the bells of the door opening, and he hurriedly placed it in the small shopping bag full of his school supplies. _'Surely they don't want it anyways, throwing it in the middle of the road like that…'_

Dudley came back grinning, eating his favorite knickerbocker glory and pointing at his ice cream, mocking Harry.

Harry ignored him and looked at Aunt Petunia. "Where's my lemon ice pop?"

She shot him an affronted look. "You? A lemon ice pop? Young man, you're already grounded for two weeks for your behavior this morning. You're not getting ice cream." Aunt Petunia herself was eating a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone.

It was all an act. "Yeah, right." His behavior this morning didn't matter. He wouldn't have gotten one even if he'd gotten up two hours early to cook them a three-course breakfast. Concentrating and staring at Dudley's ice cream, he duplicated it and dug in, glancing pointedly at his Aunt Petunia and giving her a smug smirk.

_See? I can get whatever I want!_

His aunt's incomprehensible noises of exasperation beside him were funny. The both of them knew she wouldn't pitch a fit in public. "I hope you're proud of yourself, young man." She whispered threateningly under her breath over the table at him. "You've just earned yourself another week to your grounding."

Harry snickered and ignored her. _'Stupid human. I'm a magician! I can do anything. You can't stop me. I can take care of myself!' _Then he remembered the notebook hidden in his shopping bag. _'I wonder what's up with the notebook. Notebooks don't just fall out of the clouds like that.' _He paused, remembering one of his lifelong recurring dreams. _'Then again motorcycles aren't supposed to fly either. But I really want one, anyways.'_

When they got home, Harry obediently went right to couch to be lectured. Dudley darted up to his playroom to eat his candy and see what pokemon cards he got.

His aunt was yelling at him now. "How dare you treat me like this. We took you in and gave you a roof over your head and food to eat. You know I don't have to give you a mattress and Dudley's nice hand me down bedding, right? I don't even have to let you eat from the table, I could just give you peanut butter crackers an water. We've been very generous with you, Harry, so that you don't turn out to be the same drunk, unemployed low-lives your parents were and grow up to be a good, civilized, upstanding boy like Dudley will be. And this is how you repay us with your freakish tricks! It stops now, Harry! No more. You will be grounded to your cupboard until it stops. Indefinetally. Even if it means you're in there till you're 17."

Harry knew this was meant to be some life-threateningly terrifying punishment, but he just couldn't bring himself to feel scared. "Yes, Aunt Petunia. I understand." Best keep it simple, or she will think he's mocking her when he's not.

He hadn't felt scared of anything they did to him since the one and only time Vernon belted him two years ago for accidentally getting on the school roof somehow. _'I wish I knew how. Then I could do it again and actually go somewhere nice.' _It was quite the spectacle – the fire department had to come and everything. It was all over the local news and everyone was talking about it for what felt like weeks.

"Go to your cupboard." His aunt ordered, pointing angrily at his cupboard. "No meals for the rest of the day. Or tomorrow. Your uncle will be hearing about this when he gets home!" It was an empty threat, because his uncle was afraid of him now. His uncle used to bring Dudley in and tell him to hit Harry, breaking his glasses every time and sometimes his nose too.

"Yes, Aunt Petunia." Harry replied, easily, grabbing his shopping bag and going to his cupboard and shutting the door behind him. He heard his Aunt follow him and lock him in. _'Now I can look at the notebook I found!' _Grinning with excitement, he pulled out the black notebook from the road with the words 'Death Note' on the front.

Author's Note: Editted on 6/18. I wanted to give him better character development and make him in Ch. 1 and Ch. 3 hopefully make more sense and not seem so OOC. I don't think this is getting across very well, but his attitude his very much a fragile ego. I wanted to add little things here and there to make him more like the abused child he is than just a little brat.


	2. Chapter 2

Harry spent the rest of the afternoon through dinnertime in his cupboard, without a single meal. He sat sitting in the cupboard and breathing in its stale, heavy, stagnant air, reading and rereading the instructions on the first page of the notebook. The death note.

'_The human whose name is written in this note shall die. This note will not take effect unless the writer has the person's face in their mind when writing his or her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be effected. If the cause of death is written within 40 seconds of writing the person's name, it will happen. If the cause of death is not specified, the person will simply die of a heart attack. After writing the cause of death, details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.' _

'_This has to be some elaborate prank. A notebook can't kill someone. Its not magical.' _

Then, it hit him. '_Maybe it is magical! Like me! Like how I'm a magician.'_

He grinned, elated, happier than he'd ever felt. He hurriedly grabbed around for a pen, in a rush of excitement. _'Who should I write down?' _

The instructions echoed in his mind. '_The human whose name is written in this note shall die.'_

A heavy weight settled in his stomach. "_If it really is a magical book and if it really does work…then I'm killing someone. I'd be even worse than the Dursleys.' _

He paused for a long moment, twirling the pen around in his hand anxiously. _'Then I just gotta write down someone really bad that deserves to die! Someone whose existence only serves to hurt people, not help them._'

Uncle Vernon came to mind, and he felt queasy even considering the possibility. '_But its true. Aunt Petunia always gets mad at him cause he micromanages her spending, he never helps out around the house, and encourages Dudley's bad behavior. Says Dudley wouldn't be so out of control if Uncle Vernon would be his dad and not his friend. He's always got an insult for everybody. He gives Dudley more presents than he can play with but he's never given me anything at all. I don't even get a bedroom but Dudley's got both a bedroom and a playroom.'_

However upon further consideration, that didn't seem like a good idea. Uncle Vernon made damn sure he knew who made the money in the house and whose money his existence was wasting. _'If Uncle Vernon doesn't work then Aunt Petunia can't buy groceries. So I can't test it with him.' _

A moment, then a horrible, amazing idea came to him. _'Dudley! I can test it with Dudley! I'll know pretty quickly if it works, and I won't have to put up with him anymore! I can have friends at school, even!' _He grinned and squinted in the dim light of the cupboard's single lightbulb, and wrote down 'Dudley Dursley' in the note in his best handwriting, making sure to keep his grotesque face in his mind as he carefully wrote each letter in his best handwriting.

He didn't have a watch to keep track of the time, so waiting for anything, whatever sign it worked, felt like it took forever. _'Did it work? Or was it all some stupid prank? I wish I had a watch._

Guestimating, he started to count back to himself. _Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven…_

Then, a sudden, panicked, strangled scream from upstairs. _Dudley._

Aunt Petunia heard him and poked her head out from the kitchen. "Dudley, dear, are you okay?"

She waited for a moment. "Dudley?"

When no one replied, and there was not a sound from the upstairs save for some video game's barely audible music, she got concerned and impatient. "Dudley!"

Harry opened the grate on his cupboard to watch as she marched down the hall and up the stairs to her son's room. "Dudley!" Petunia screamed, a horrifying, bone-chilling sound. He'd never heard her sound like that in all his life.

"What hurts, darling? Don't worry, mummy will get you to hospital." She was crying, he could hear it in her voice.

"Harry!" she screamed, and it chilled him to the bone. "Harry, call for the ambulance! Dudley's unconscious."

He nodded numbly, dumbly. "I will!" He yelled loud as he could, before walking to the phone on the wall and dialing the number. "Hello? Yes, my name's Harry Potter. I'm at Number 4 Privet Drive, sir."

It all felt so cold, so numb, so surreal.

"Its my cousin, sir. He's hurt upstairs, he screamed and then he was out cold."

He wrote down a name, and now his cousin really was upstairs dying, and he didn't know how to feel about that.

"No, sir, I didn't see it I was downstairs. My aunt said to call for an ambulance, can you send one? And hurry?"

He could hardly believe it really happened, even as the officer on the other end asked questions. "Thank you, sir. Yes, I'll stay on the line."

He covered the speaker with a hand and yelled up to his Aunt. "They're coming, Aunt Petunia! He said they're on the way!"

He numb, cold, floating as if in a dream. Everything felt slow and distant. Within minutes, he heard sirens outside and red and blue lights shone through the windows into the house.

He ran to open the door for the paramedics. "He's upstairs!" he said, pointing upstairs.

His Aunt came out of Dudley's room to meet them at the top of the landing, her face streaked red and puffy with tears. "Please help him, he's my baby. My only baby. I can't lose another!" She was hysterical.

She was talking about her firstborn daughter, who was born premature and died just at just a few days old. Her name was Rose Marie. What was going to be her nursery ended up becoming Dudley's playroom instead.

He would never get the image of the paramedics carrying Dudley's prone body on an adult-sized stretcher down the stairs, his aunt Petunia following behind, crying, wailing. Wheels popped out from under the stretcher when they got to the bottom and they wheeled him out, scratching the side table on the way in their rush. Petunia didn't even notice, nor care, she just grabbed him roughly by the arm and pulled him along with her into the back of the ambulance. "Stop lollygagging and come on!"

He didn't have time to grab his shoes, but as he sat in the back staring in numb disbelief at the paramedics working on Dudley, he noticed that his Aunt Petunia hadn't either.

* * *

Author's Note:

Sorry for the late update, and the shitty quality chapter. I just wanted to put something out and I had a hard time writing it. I didn't want him to be just another sociopathic serial killer.

Also, the thing about the baby Rose Marie is my headcanon. They have a four bedroom house with Dudley's room, Dudley's playroom, and a guest room for Aunt Marge. The way I see it, if you read into it, its possible they intended to have more children.

I was getting complaints about what is apparently called doublespeak or something like that? So i tried to work on it this chapter. Lemme know if its better or worse and what i can do to improve. I feel like its a very sloppily written chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

August 3rd, 1990. It would be forever burned within their memories as the day Dudley Dursley died. It was like the world had jolted abruptly to a stop and then began turning again, against their will, shifted on its axis, forever changed.

Home used to be a peaceful place. Uncle Vernon would come right home from work and greet Aunt Petunia in the kitchen with a kiss. Harry would listen and watch, helping his aunt cook and set the table, a wistful look on his face. Would his mum and dad have been like that? Happily chatting about each others' days, with the occasional bit of venting about some minor frustration. Like the neighbor letting their dog poop in their yard and not cleaning it up, or some idiot at the office that Vernon had to yell at.

It was all gone, now. Aunt Petunia hadn't cooked a single meal since the day Dudley died. A week or so after the funeral Aunt Marge and the neighbors had stopped bringing meals by the house for them. Uncle Vernon never came home after work, instead he went straight to the pub for a drink and only came back after Aunt Petunia had already gone to bed. Oftentimes he would come home a stumbling drunkard, missing the toilet and infuriating Aunt Petunia to the point of getting up out of bed to yell at him. Vernon slept on the couch now, banished from the bed so long as he kept coming home drunk.

And then there was Wraith. Wraith was the Shinigami that owned the death note he'd picked up. His face was just a skull with a wide mouth, bright red eyes and spiky brown hair. He wore a white button up shirt, black trousers, a black belt with a gold belt buckle, a pair of blue-tinted googles, a black coat, and a messenger bag. In his right hand, he brandished a skeletal warhammer like weapon but he'd never seen him use it, he just kept it at his back. Its sillouette reminded him a lot of one of Uncle Vernon's ballpoint pens. Wraith walked with a funny limp, but when he'd asked he'd said it didn't hurt him. Its just how he walked.

"Morning, Harry." Wraith said, greeting him as he decided to finally get up and not roll over and go back to sleep for a third time.

"Morning, Wraith." He whispered, being careful not to be overheard as he grabbed his glasses and put them on.

"You should get something to eat, Harry. I know you don't want to see your aunt, but you have to keep your strength up." Wraith said, encouragingly.

"Hm-mm." he hummed, noncommittally. It was all false, Wraith just wanted him to kill someone, but it still felt nice to have someone say good morning and to care about his welfare. He'd never had that before.

"You don't have to stay here, you know. You're limiting yourself to what they allow you to do. You could be so much more than this." Wraith offered, starting up their usual daily argument. "All you have to do is write their names down, and you're done with this mistreatment forever! What have they ever done for you? So what if you killed your cousin, he deserved it. People like that who do nothing but hurt others deserve to die, so that the world is filled with only nice, kind people."

"No, Wraith. Then I'll have nowhere else to go. Orphanages and foster homes will just beat you and rape you, that's what Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia always say." He countered, getting undressed and putting on some clean clothes.

He would rather not, but he didn't have a choice but to get dressed. Aunt Petunia would never let him hear the end of it otherwise. She would use it as yet another reason to insult him even if she was still wearing the same outfit she'd worn for the past three days.

"I've explained this to you, Harry." Wraith replied, patiently, gently, "Your uncle only said that so you wouldn't tell anyone about your cupboard and that being grounded means you're locked in without meals."

Harry shook his head. "I said no. Will you stop asking if I get you an apple?"

"Fine." Wraith replied.

They both knew this conversation was far from over. It never would be until he gave in.

Harry did his best to stay silent and out of the way, going through his day numb and unfeeling. It was like he was floating around through a neverending dream. Was it bad that he hadn't felt a thing since the day the paramedics took away Dudley? He just went floating through his day like it was all a dream. Some awful dream. Like he hadn't just killed his cousin. Like any second now he'd come barreling down the steps asking for more candy or for his Aunt to take him to his friends' house. It still felt weird. He felt crazy, seeing imagined shadows of his cousin everywhere he went.

'_I didn't think it would be like this' _He thought to himself, pulling on yesterday's clothes. _'Dudley dying was supposed to make happy stuff happen. Not be like this.'_

His Aunt couldn't stand the sight of him anymore, convinced he had used magic to kill Dudley. She spent her days sitting in one room or another crying, calling for him to clean for her, and hissing words of blame and malice at him.

"_You killed my son, you ungrateful freak! I know you did!" _

Uncle Vernon thought her a bit touched in the head with grief.

Today, she'd confronted him when he walked in to make himself some toast real quick and take it back to his cupboard to eat. Nevermind that it was nearly noon.

"How dare you show your face in here!" She bit at him, looking up from her half-empty, cold cup of coffee.

Harry stayed silent, not replying and refusing to look at her as he grabbed the last clean plate and two slices of bread from the four-day-old loaf of bread bag on the counter. If he didn't look her in the eyes, he didn't have to face the full brunt of her emotions.

"Turn around and look at me when I'm talking to you, boy!" she hollered. He heard the scraping of her chair on the tile floor. "No respect at all. You're nothing but a lazy, irresponsible layabout like your father!"

He plopped the bread in the toaster, biting his lip as he tried to evade his aunt's advance and get to the fridge so he could retrieve the butter and marmalade. He failed.

She grabbed him by the shoulder, stopping him and bodily shoving him into the cabinets. "Admit it! Admit it you freak. You killed my son! My only son, the only son I'll ever have!"

Her angry, watery eyes, her face beet red with anger and grief, it pierced right through him. His mouth opened and closed and opened again but no words would come out.

His aunt got frustrated, shaking him roughly with both hands, demanding. "Admit it, you murderer. You're a murderer! You're lucky I don't kill you right here for what you've done to me."

Her voice faltered and she broke down crying again, and the toaster dinged and she released him to return back to her seat, sobbing like the heartbroken mother she was. He got the butter and marmalade out of the fridge.

_Murderer._

The word bounced around violently in his brain as he mechanically put a generous amount of marmalade on his toast. He wasn't even hungry anymore. He just knew from lots of experience that he should eat as much as he could when he had the opportunity. On that note, he grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl on the counter to hide in his cupboard just in case and closed the door behind him. He would duplicate it and give the other one to Wraith.

Was he a murderer? What did it mean to be a killer? Was he somehow intrinsically different now than he was before he put pen to paper several a few weeks ago? Forever tainted.

_Murderer. I'm a murderer._

It didn't feel right. Nothing felt right. Nothing was like he had imagined. He felt numb most of the time now, not happy. Not even the prospect of moving to the new flat in London close to Vernon's work lifted his mood. They were moving in a few days and most everything had been packed away already. He wasn't even bitter that he wouldn't be getting a bedroom. They'd probably just shove him in the closet and buy a wardrobe to use instead. And he deserved it. Didn't he?

_I'm a murderer. Murderers don't get bedrooms._

_Some magician I am. I'm not a magician, I'm a murderer. _

The shock of his life came on moving day. He'd just grabbed his school bag and his singe box of belongings from his cupboard and made to follow them out the door when his Aunt spoke up.

"You aren't allowed to come with us."

"Huh?" he said, dumbly. He couldn't believe his ears.

"You heard me!" His Aunt replied. "I don't care how it looks. You killed my son, you ungrateful freak. I won't put up with you anymore!"

He nearly dropped his single box of belongings. "What? Where am I going, then? Aunt Marge's house?"

His Aunt gave a forced, sarcastic laugh. "Aunt Marge's house? As if. She can't stand you. We asked, and she refused. We're going to drop you off somewhere in London and if anyone asks, you ran away. Got it?"

His blood ran cold. They were just gonna abandon him in the middle of nowhere?!

"You are no longer of any blood relation to us." She hissed, getting in his face. "Do you hear me? If the police bring you back to us, I'll kill you. You hear me? You dare come near my family again and I'll kill you!"

There was so much anger in her eyes, in her face, he couldn't help but believe her. He was shaking. He was terrified, beyond terrified. She really did want to kill him. His chest felt like someone had grabbed him from behind and was trying to squeeze the life out of him. He could scarcely breathe he was so scared.

"Au-Aunt Petunia, you can't-" he gasped, barely able to speak the words he was breathing too quickly. Where was he gonna sleep? How was he gonna eat? He didn't have any money!

She slapped him hard across the face. "You killed my son! Of course I can. I don't owe you anything. I only took you in so we could get the protection from the wards Dumbledore set up! That way we wouldn't end up murdered, too."

Murdered? What did her parent's deaths have to do with him? That was robbers! Right?

His uncle spoke up from his spot on the floor where the armchair usually was. He was surprisingly sober, for now. "Didn't know that, did you? Some cult freak wanted you dead so he killed Pet's mum and dad and grandpa and grandma and your mum and dad, all to find you and kill you."

Vernon sneered and laughed at him, finding great amusement in torturing him with this new information.

Everything he'd been thinking about came to a crashing halt. What?

"I thought they died drunk in a car crash!" Coming home from a Halloween party. It was the story he'd always been told.

"Of course not. No car crash would have killed my sister. She was a magical freak, just like you. But you were even more of a freak than she was because some madman leading an evil cult wanted you dead before you were even born. You killed my sister, and I took you in anyways. How stupid I was. You were all I had left of my sister. I couldn't bear to put you in an orphanage. Lily would never forgive me, I thought. So I kept you. Now, I wish I'd tossed you out the day they dropped you on our doorstep, because then Dudley would still be alive!"

For the first time in three and a half weeks, tears sprang to his eyes. He was an emotional wreck of horror, fear, confusion, anger, and desperation and now he wanted nothing more than the familiar numbness to come back.

Vernon got up from the carpet and took his keys out of his pocket. "Its time, Tunia. Ready to go? Got everything you need?"

Petunia nodded stiffly, turning back around to her husband. "Yes, of course. Everything's all here in my purse. I sweeped the house twice to check."

"Guess this is farewell now, isn't it boy?" Vernon said gleefully, "No more of your nonsense. Finally! Haven't had a nice, normal day since the day you darkened our doorstep. I'll even be able-"

Vernon was cut off by a cracking sound, and a small, elf-ish creature wearing a stained pillowcase appeared in the middle of them all. It had thin, bony grey-ish limbs, watery eyes, and ears too big for its head, and it was clutching a red envelope.

"Twinky has a letter for Missus and Messrs Dursley?" it croaked in a high, feminine voice.

Wraith looked curiously at the little rat-looking thing. "What's a house elf doing here?"

"This thing from their lot?" Uncle Vernon asked, glancing at his wife to confirm his suspicions. Aunt Petunia nodded curtly, and Uncle Vernon backed up and let his wife handle the situation. This surprised Harry because it was always Uncle Vernon who took charge, and he only found himself even more confused. _What's going on? What's a house elf?_

Aunt Petunia swiped the letter from the house elf quickly and it shrank back in fear, as if thinking it would be struck.

As soon as she broke the ancient-looking wax seal and took the letter out, it spoke!

"Remember my last, Petunia!"

It was the voice of a very old man, speaking very seriously, sternly, to his Aunt. It didn't say anything more, but his Aunt seemed to know just who it was and just what they meant because she ripped the paper up, furious.

"The nerve of that meddlesome old fool!" Aunt Petunia shrieked. "I can do what I damn well want to! This is my house and my family! I was finally about to be rid of that world for good, and now he has some little imp popping into our house!"

_Who is it? Is it that Dumbledore man? _He knew better than to ask, though.

"So that Dumbledore sent that-that thing and the letter?" his uncle said, gesturing at the house elf still wringing its hands and looking at them, waiting for something.

_Does it want an answer?_

His aunt looked exasperated. "Of course! Who else? Dumbledore is worse than the boy."

She turned her anger to the scared little elf. "What are you waiting for? Go and tell that old coot I'm not keeping him! I won't risk the life of myself and my husband any longer! He's a danger to us all!"

The elf gave a terrified squeak and popped away, and with that his aunt yanked the keys from her husband's hands and walked to the car. "Hurry up, Vernon!"

Uncle Vernon just shook his head at his wife's behavior and followed her into the car. Harry's body reacted, but his mind wasn't quite keeping up with his surroundings. Before he had registered it, they were out of the driveway and on the road to London.

Uncle Vernon still thought his aunt was a bit mad, but apparently he wouldn't say no to a chance to get rid of him even if he thought it was in error.

_I never had a chance of being loved like Dudley, did I? _

Tears flowed down his cheeks at the thought. For a long, long time all he'd wanted was for his aunt and uncle to love him. He'd tried doing his best in school getting all A's, he'd tried doing worse than Dudley so Dudley looked best, he'd tried doing all his chores and even extra, he'd made crafts for them at school as gifts for the holidays, he'd tried everything he could think of. Everything he saw other kids doing for their families. Everything he could in hopes they would finally at least smile at him and say "Good job!" or "Thank you, I love it!".

It was okay if he slept in a cupboard. It was okay if he didn't get any presents ever. He wasn't their son. That was normal. But for a long time, he would have given anything, everything, to get even a fraction of the affection that Dudley did. He'd thought if he tried enough, he'd make up for being born to unemployed, drunk layabouts who pushed their duties off onto other people even in death.

He'd thought he mattered at least a teeny, tiny bit. At least a basic amount. Even the unwanted, yappy dog in the neighbors yard got food and water in its bowls and a little dog house to sleep in. They didn't turn it out on the streets to fend for itself like they were doing. Driving into London dead set on abandoning him.

* * *

Author's Note: And here's chapter 3! Sorry for the wait. I got distracted with other fanfics and then when I did get in the mood to write this one, it just wouldn't come out. I'm trying to remember Harry is just an abused 10 year old kid, not Light or anything close to Light. I editted chapter 1 as well, I think its worth a reread. Just some minor things but I hope it'll help Ch. 1 Harry make sense with Ch.3 Harry.


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